


Weathered

by skullage



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dark, F/M, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:34:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skullage/pseuds/skullage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That’s what they don’t tell you about judgement day: how to live with yourself when it takes everyone else but you. AR of post-season five missing year where Dean has always been a girl and Lucifer doesn't kill Castiel or Bobby in Stull, but Sam still dives into hell. Dean deals with the aftermath of his death while Cas deals with being human and they learn to deal with each other. A story about heartbreak and learning to cope with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weathered

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [dc-dystopia](dc-dystopia.livejournal.com) comm challenge. Art post [here](http://positivelysilly.livejournal.com/2811.html).

There’s a hole in Dean’s chest that won’t close, the size and depth of the one Sam sailed into. She kneeled on the grass in what looked like supplication, with her head bowed, blood dripping from the tip of her nose and the corner of her eyes. Fists clenched on her thighs. Saying nothing that could be a wish to be connected with the ground that swallowed Sam; saying nothing. Inhaling the scent of blood and desperation and loss.

Bobby was the one to touch her first with a hand on her shoulder and a soft-spoken, “Kiddo,” but it was Cas who woke her up. There was blood on his hand, smeared from the cut across his neck from where he’d hit the tree. She’d heard the crack, from Cas or Bobby she didn’t see, the twin thuds of them hitting the ground and Sam’s fist as it collided with the side of her face. Bobby looked only marginally better, swollen eyes hooded by his trucker cap.

The ground beneath Dean’s knees was solid, too unrelenting and real for the way it had opened minutes, hours before she stared up through the bruises and blood in her eyes to see the same loss reflected in theirs. It hadn’t been Sam staring, smiling down at her; hadn’t been Sam who lay waste to her skin and bones in rage. It’d been Sam’s hands, Sam’s words that opened the cage, Sam’s feet that delivered him, but it was Bobby and Cas who were left with the aftermath of her loss.

“Dean,” Cas urges, pulling her to her feet as if she weighs nothing, despite the pull the ground has on her. Her shock is too heavy for her legs to support and she leans with her arm around his shoulders, the both of them shaken and unsteady. Bobby leads them to the Impala and gets in the driver’s side, because Cas is useless and still can’t drive and Dean can’t see to save herself. Blood, tears, whatever it is leaks down her face, and she manages to close her eyes enough not to have to look at anything.

Bobby drives. Says, “I’ll come back for the pick-up” in a voice that doesn’t belong to him. The thunder of the engine is alien and deafening, drowning out the sound of Sam’s voice and Michael’s scream as they fell, the sounds that thrum through Dean’s mind on repeat of how the wind whipped them over the edge. Dean’s heart beats a slow-motion jackhammer in her chest, thumping only enough to clot her blood and choke her when she breathes. Cas’ mouth moves in the shape of a question, but no one answers. Dean has no voice, no hearing; hands that won’t work. Dean has no soul. She can’t scream anymore, without herself or anyone else to hear it.

She stares at her hands, stares through the floor of the car to the ground and the heart beating for her underneath it. They drive and drive.

 

~

  
Dean lies in bed and stares at the wall so long the individual spots of mould damage run together. Bobby puts food in front of her every so often, cold-cut sandwiches, meatball stew that makes her sick as the smell of cooked meat hits her nostrils, cereal that turns to mush before she notices it’s there; often enough that she can tell time has passed. Hours, days.

She dozes with her eyes open, and always to the sight of Sam falling. In her dreams he’s ten years old and she catches him, kisses the sun from his skin and plucks the clouded yellow from his eyes. His wings scorch the earth, miles and miles of shadow, and entrenched so deep her fingers bleed trying to free them. Sammy never yells, laying in his crib he never cries, because in Dean’s dreams he’s not in pain.

Sam is never there when she wakes. Sam is never there, screaming, crying, falling, or dying in her arms in Azazel’s playground.

Sometimes Castiel is there, refuting his initial claim that he perches on no-one’s shoulder. One time she wakes to the sting of antiseptic on the cuts on her face. As she blinks Cas shifts in and out of focus, his hands huge and cold. She flinches away.

“The fuck, are you trying to blind me?” Her muscles sear, skin boiling through her pores in abstract places when she sits up.

Castiel huffs. “I’m trying to help. Or I could let you contract an infection, or disease, which, from what I’ve seen, are much more unpleasant than a slight sting.” His expression changes as Dean pries her eyes open fully, from concerned to pissed, to vaguely irritated and sad.

Dean plants her feet on the floor, the only part of her that doesn’t spasm incessantly. “Forgive me if I don’t feel like getting mangled even worse, Nurse Ratched.” Immediately her head starts to spin. Bright pain stabs the backs of her eyes, bruises throbbing as she tries to rub them. After a minute she manages to open them to look around, the room just as bare and as close to home as it’s ever been, a bowl of something cream-coloured and congealed on the nightstand, and the headache recedes.

Cas is still leaning toward her, looking at her as if she’s the one who died. Grief is etched into the lines around his mouth and eyes, age lines and death lines and smile lines from a guy who probably spent years smiling until Castiel refused to smile for him. When she focuses on Cas’ eyes, the depth of them, the sunlight firing them up makes her own water. His face, pale and gaunt and bruised, hurts to look at. Sympathy pains light Dean’s skin on fire. He seems so small compared to the angel he was a month before. Even with diminished powers and a hangover he slumped, pulled down by the invisible forces Dean could feel; with an apocalypse averted, they’re not so important now. Cas still sits like he’s forgotten he has a spine to support him.

His sleeves are rolled to his elbows, and the stark contrast of the memory of his once-pristine shirt and the coats that overlaid it brings to light how different he is, now; how human. Even in the week after his powers depleted he still wore his suit and tie. Dean’s not wearing a shirt with sleeves; her tank top sticks to her skin from the sheen of sweat that the humidity draws. Dean draws breath like each one is her first.

“I need the bathroom,” she announces, apropos of nothing, and Cas stretches his hand out. It’s a strange thing to experience, his movement toward her with intent. To touch, to help, something other than the intimidation tactic that became so secondary that they grew used to it and gravitated toward each other unintentionally. Fought so close and hard near each other they lived in the space that defies definition.

They were never meant to be soldiers. Cas, with his indifference, and Dean with her need, their duty combined, deceived them. Their demands tricked them, and their wars changed them. When she looks at him she can see the person this last war made him, and dreads what she might see in herself.

With the last battle over and nothing to unite them, what will become of their displaced rage? Of them?

Cas’ hand closes around her elbow and she shrugs him off immediately, muttering under her breath about nursemaids and bedpans and Cas backs away. The eighteen shuffled steps to the bathroom are almost as painful as the pressure in her bladder forcing her forward. She collapses onto the toilet seat with her sweatpants around her knees, breathing too harshly for so little effort.

At least you’re breathing , she thinks. It’s not as comforting as it should be.

The tiles are cool on her toes, the seat cold despite the afternoon sunlight streaming through the window and the heat warping the wooden beams and floorboards that creak underneath. She shuffles over to the sink, leans on the dirty porcelain, and feels the steady weight of it in her hands; when she looks in the mirror she immediately regrets it. It isn’t a pretty sight.

Sickness pools in the hollow of her stomach. Her skin is mottled shades of yellow and purple and black, bruised down to the bone, straight to her core. Her shirt hides a mess of colours and crooked bones visible beneath the thinnest layers of skin. The sight makes her ache in new ways, as if just seeing it makes what happened real and not an intangible memory.

It seems fitting, somehow. She didn’t survive unscathed. Here’s proof, painted on her skin in the shape of loss and sacrifice. Here’s what happened to you, bone-deep and bleeding. Here’s your brother’s fists, made or fire and rage, still fluttering weakly in your chest like the eyelids of sleeping baby.

It was always going to be this way. One way or another, Sam was always going to fall.

The stairs are a harder obstacle. Each one creaks as they never used to with the sure-footed steps of a hunter in her prime, groaning as they hold her lolloping weight. She leans too heavily on one ankle to distract from the pain in the other that shoots from her foot to her hip, through muscle and bone and what’s left of her. Voices drift through the house, gruff, stilted conversation that features Dean’s name, and if she focuses on the knives in her side she can’t hear the mention of Sam. She won’t be able to hear the distinct absence of him.

By the time her foot hits the bottom stair she’s out of breath. The running water and clink of dishes masks her heavy breathing and awkward steps to the kitchen.

“It’s not one of the Nguruvilu.” Cas’ statement comes after the tap stops running, his voice growing more audible.

Bobby’s is gruff and businesslike. “That’s not what it sounds like. River, whirlpools, eating people in boats.”

“You said it had horns, resembling deer.”

“That’s what Tyler said.”

Dean stops before the doorway. They stand almost shoulder to shoulder, Bobby washing as Cas dries, both facing the window into the yard, talking a hunt. She draws a breath. It’s been less than a week and already they’re setting up shop again.

“Then it’s not the Nguruvilu. Your friend was attacked in Minesota, not Chile.”

“Crazy new world.” Bobby shrugs. “Something nasty is always ready and willing to surprise us, especially now, after what Lucifer released.” At that remark, Cas’ shoulders bunch, suddenly pissy at being told what he should, presumably, already know. The sight is familiar to Dean. Bobby continues, “There was a Kumiko sighted in Pontiac just last week.”

Dean turns around, walks into the lounge room instead and collapses on the couch with a groan. The sunlight is brighter now, a deeper orange, casting longer shadows. The conversation continues.

“Most likely it’s a water lynx, or an underwater panther.”

“Are you talking about Mishibizhiw?”

“Perhaps one of its offspring.”

Bobby huffs in something resembling amusement. The noise causes a wave of irritation to rise in Dean’s chest. “Makes sense. How do you kill the suckers? Never seen one, myself.”

“Copper dagger dripped in snake venom. Preferably a water snake native to the area.”

A pause. “Well, let’s hope Tyler’s stocked.” They fall silent as Bobby picks up the phone. Dean lays her head on the armrest, too tired to sleep, too awake to be dreaming. “If I’da known how handy you were kid, I’da let you stick around sooner. Beer?”

“Dean is in the lounge room,” Castiel answers.

Another pause, something like a sigh. It’s hard to tell with Bobby, these days. “Better break out the whiskey, then.”

 

~

  
As soon as she can make it to the car by herself Dean’s on the open road, duffel in the back seat, and silence in the space she doesn’t fill. The car has never been so quiet, the road never so uninviting. She drives and drives.

The drive to Lisa’s takes fourteen hours, but Dean makes it in half that, dodging tolls and taking back roads, flying under the cover of night past memories of Joliet and feeling like she’s still back there. In prison, or in hell, some nights there wasn’t much difference. A night’s drive that means Sam’s still gone; one more day he hasn’t been here. Summer is breaking out in shades of green and brown and gold, colours of change and prosperity. The ghost of Sam lingers, drawing her back, pushing her on. She tells herself there’s no right way to live, but driving is all she knows; she made a promise all the same. It starts and ends in her car.

The promise gets harder to keep as the hours wear on and she waits on the curb-side like a lonely john in a seedy bar, too afraid of rejection. Through the window, Lisa and Ben paint a picture of domestic bliss, eating dinner at the table, smiling, living. Dean’s heart breaks again. The news of the state of the world might not have even hit them. The tornado warnings and earthquakes might have breezed on by like Dean, leaving a shaken trail of destruction that the two of them sailed through, and you’d never be able to tell it happened at all.

Dean catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, face still swollen and discoloured, roughened to match her insides. She’s missing two teeth in the back of her jaw. She can still taste copper and dirt.

The neighbourhood fades in the rear-view mirror as quickly as it appeared, Christmas-light streets and the shoebox houses to match speeding away from Dean’s car all the way back to Sioux Falls. She’s never been good at keeping promises, not when it comes to Sam. Leaving him in hell, who was he kidding?

As for Lisa, well. It’s not the first dream Dean has chosen Sam over.

 

~

  
Bobby’s house is too silent these days, but never empty. Books line the floor, desks, and couches, stacks of dust and paper that tremble with each step, threatening to dissolve in a cloud of knowledge and age. The space not taken up by hunters’ journals and supernatural encyclopaedias houses empty liquor bottles, an array of untouched weapons covered in the same dust the books are made from, as if they leech onto everything they touch. Wisdom is infectious, another form of alcoholism or depression, and Bobby’s house is rampant. With an ankle that hasn’t healed and the lingering effects of countless aches, Dean’s never had to be so careful.

Cas is alone on the porch, sipping whiskey from a glass when Dean makes her way outside. He stares off into the distance unmoving even when Dean closes the door. His weirdness and isolation seem to be getting the better of him. The day before Dean caught him drowning a cockroach in the sink, its legs skittering frantically over the wet metal before Cas doused it again and again until it stopped flailing and lay stomach-up in the trap. He mourns his bowel movements and it creeps Dean out. He never prays.

She’s disturbed, but probably not in the way she should be.

She clears her throat. “So I take it there’s nothing good on the idiot box.” Flood warnings, hurricanes all over the globe, nuclear reactor meltdowns, whole villages disappearing. Daytime soaps are still running, though. When the world ends again and there’s no one left to air them, tv stations are still programmed to run for three weeks.

Cas doesn’t answer.

Dean sighs. Thunderstorms in Des Moines and Minneapolis, but Sioux Falls is still as dry as ever. “Right.” She moves toward the steps and Cas snaps his head around.

“Hello, Dean. I didn’t know you’d returned.”

“What’re you, deaf or something?”

“Partially,” Cas intones patiently. His voice is dry, his lips chapped. He looks no different, sits as hunched as ever. Whatever injuries he sustained are healed or invisible; his gaze is distant even though she’s standing two feet away. “Michael,” he explains. “When I – distracted him. It, uh. Deafened me slightly, in my left ear.” He’s human now; he’s susceptible.

“Right,” Dean repeats. There’s only two words in her vocabulary right now and one of them is a name. “Bobby says there’s a hunt in Shreveport. Okami, or something with claws. Should be fun.”

“There are also witch doctors in Shreveport with the power to commune with the dead in hell, but I’m sure you already knew that.” Cas doesn’t miss a goddamn beat.

“Small world,” Dean snaps. Her muscles are already aching from standing longer than ten minutes.

“I suppose I should come along,” Cas drawls, taking a sip of hunter’s best whiskey swill, rolling it around his mouth. He stinks of sweat and alcohol and hopeless lethargy, a smell Dean is intimately familiar with.

“With your one ear? That’s a liability, Cas. You really want to take that chance?”

“Since you have no one else to curb your stupidity, and I’ve no doubt your mind is already set, it seems I have to.” His honesty is sobering. How he achieves it while he’s half in the bag is beyond Dean. He looks back at her. “Together we might pass for one logical and functioning hunter.”

Dean looks out into the yard. “You should probably stay here. I can take care of myself.”

Cas pushes himself up. “You could have already left without me knowing.” He brushes past her as he heads inside, a shambling, tipsy, human replica of himself. Dean stands on the porch by herself for a minute with the image of the hazy sadness in Cas’ eyes, and two memories that don’t measure up to their real counterparts.

 

~

  
Cas’ first driving lesson ends in Dean slamming the passenger-side door and fuming over the damage done to the Impala’s clutch. With his right ear practically useless, Dean spent most of it shouting instructions until she was hoarse as he white-knuckled it for almost forty minutes driving sixty down a dirt track, grinding gears like reps until Dean had forced him onto the side of the road and taken over. They spend a day in Lincoln while she works on the car and Cas takes over research duty as punishment, but by the time Dean drops the act of fixing whatever damage Cas didn’t do, Bobby rings to tell them the hunt in Shreveport is already sorted.

“Bobby has offered a ritual haunting in Maryland.”

“What a martyr. I swear Cas, if you fucked up my brake system.”

“If you haven’t discerned that by now, Dean, then you’re not as good a mechanic as you’ve previously adjudicated.”

Dean closes the hood, pushes her hair back out of her face. It’s getting too long, enough to hang into her eyes, but not long enough to actually do anything with. “Don’t be a smartass. I don’t let just anyone drive my car, y’know.”

“Is this how you taught Sam to drive?”

Dean doesn’t respond. They pack up the Impala and hit the road with all barrels loaded and passive-aggression making conversation for them. For a full hour she doesn’t feel Cas’ eyes boring into the side of her head.

The silence eventually builds up to a level that drowns out the engine and the tires coasting over asphalt. Even staring out the window Dean can read the pissy frown on his face. Whatever it is he’s not saying, Dean’s not really in the mood to listen, and opts for whatever crap Kentucky’s back roads are polluting the airways with. The tail end of  Take It Easy  streams from the radio and Dean almost laughs from the irony. Almost.

Cas turns his head after a few seconds and stares at the dashboard. The sunlight hits his cheekbones, the sharp jut of his jaw, skin tinged pink because no one ever taught him about sun screen or skin cancer and how those go hand-in-hand with day long drives through the desert.

“Sam likes this song,” he says absentmindedly.

Dean’s mouth goes dry. Her fingers tighten on the wheel and her jaw clenches in agitation. She’s sore in places that aren’t physical to the point that she’s almost numb, but Cas’ words open her up again the way they’ve always done, even before Sam— even before. “Don’t,” she barks.

Cas glances across at her, and she stares pointedly at the road. “I have the right,” he responds. No pity or venom in his tone, just the glacial calm of an iceberg hitting Dean in the stomach.

“No, you don’t. Don’t talk about him like you  knew  him.”

“You’re angry,” Cas observes.

“No shit.”

“You miss him.”

If Dean weren’t driving she’d take a swing. The thought of breaking her fist across Cas’ face is a tempting one; just to see his eyes go wide and his human blood spill the way she couldn’t make it before. Broken nose, blackened eyes, bruised face. Make him feel how Dean feels, with half a working heart and a battered chest.

She turns the radio dial up enough for even the socially-bereft to take the hint. Eventually her grip on the wheel slackens and Cas returns to staring out the window.

 

~

  
Dean does a recon of the first victim’s house and leaves Cas specific instructions to wait in the fucking car and not touch any of her shit. It would be easier with two people to scout for sulphur, ectoplasm, residual gore or any of the numerous tell-tale signs that after six weeks of fuck-all they’ve finally stumbled upon something suited for their expertise, but Dean just doesn’t have it in her to deal with anyone right now. Bringing Cas along was a mistake – hell, taking on any cases was probably a mistake, with her nerves shot to hell and her ability to run only just starting to return, but hunting has always been the staple of her life, and she would take distraction over sitting idle any day. She just doesn’t need Cas looking over her shoulder every minute, tracing his fingers over every part of the house like he can still dredge up secrets with a touch, and then audibly and visibly lamenting the fact that he can’t. Or worse, staring at Dean like she’s about to climb a clock tower with a sniper rifle slung over her shoulder and a boom box blasting the  Full Metal Jacket  soundtrack.

She climbs the stairs to the house with her Browning tucked into the back of her jeans and the EMF reader in her hand, ignoring the stab of pain that flares through her ankle with each step. There’s something in that reminder of what went down and how long it’s been; even when the pale-yellow of her bruises only stands out when she looks hard enough, her ankle will make sure her body doesn’t forget. As if it could.

After an hour of combing through Marcus Sullivan’s humble, cottage-style decorated antiques and the disturbing, if not meticulous, array of taxidermy animals, Dean doesn’t have any evidence to support the theory of death via supernatural intervention. It’s after two and her brain is clouded by a the fuzz of exhaustion, from the heat or the two hours of sleep a night she’s been working on, it doesn’t matter. Her hands shake. The taste of desert sticks to the roof of her mouth. When she trudges down the front pathway Cas is leaning patiently against the passenger-side door.

“Did you find any sign of supernatural activity?” His stare is blank, but his tone betrays the expectation of disappointment hidden under his cool demeanor.

“Searched every room, even the attic, every stick of creepy, old furniture, and nothing, nada,  nyet . Guy slits his wrists and blows his brains out, you’d think ghosts would have to be involved. Witches, at least.”

Cas levels her with a stare. “The human will is quite strong. It’s amazing what some people will do to die if their mind is set.”

Dean rolls her eyes. “Yeah, thanks for the humanity refresher course.” She shifts her weight onto her left foot. “I’ve seen the depraved depths people sink to, y’know. I’ve been around this shit since I was four. When was the last time you were even  on  earth to see how people behave?”

Cas’ stare turns icy. It’s a look Dean’s seen more of in the past month and a half than in two years of knowing him. The last few weeks have not been easy on them, and they are not being easy on each other. Dean is so very, very tired.

“And the basement?”

“There was no basement.”

“The report mentioned a trail of blood leading to the basement.”

“Well, if it was a demon or a ghost or some other critter there’d be a sign – fur, hex bag, mangled body parts in weird places – but I’m telling you, I didn’t see jack.” She sighs and scrubs a hand over her face. “If you wanna go play Clue in the creepy basement of the creepy house, be my guest, but I need a drink, so stay here or get in the car. It really don’t bother me.”

She stalks around the other side and slams the door as she gets in. The leather rubs uncomfortably warm against her skin. Cas follows suit, closing the door carefully after as he folds his legs in. For the second time Dean notices his sleeves are rolled, with the addition of a damp ring around his collar where it touches his neck. The other day he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans that didn’t fit but suited him too well. It strikes her how well he seems to be fitting in.

He hasn’t complained about the heat that she can feel boring down on her, the sticky leather seat, or the dust of small-town nowhere clogging her throat. It might be one of those things he doesn’t notice because he assumes being uncomfortable is normal, how he was uncoordinated and dizzy for the first two days of being human before Dean shoved a sandwich down his throat, or the burn of his muscles he must feel when they spar every few nights.

Dean watches sweat bead on his upper lip for a minute, but doesn’t reach for the AC. In an uncharacteristic move, he pulls at the front of his collar, deftly undoing his tie enough to slip it off. It’s almost a game, watching him work out the nuances of living, and utterly fascinating. It boils Dean’s blood sometimes when he can’t figure out how to use the oven timer, or how she emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam to find him just  there , waiting his turn for the shower, waiting and living. That he never says a word to acknowledge how weird their situation is, even if Sam never did, because at least Sam knew, and that was enough. At least Sam–

Cas looks over at her with his tie balled in his fist and his eyes cloudy. Dean becomes aware that she’s staring and self-consciously runs a hand through her hair, looks down at her shirt to find it soaked through in patches and clinging to her skin. She sighs, reaches over the seat to grab the nearest shirt she can find – plain, fitted, green t-shirt that’s seen better days – strips off the singlet and pulls the shirt on. They’re in the kind of white-bread neighbourhood with an average income low enough for both parents to be working; no cars in any of the driveways, save for Sullivan’s, no witnesses to interview, no one to see her impromptu peepshow. Cas isn’t looking at her. She has no need to feel self-conscious. She loosens the strap on her bra where it cuts into her skin. She’s uncomfortable on so many levels.

“Shall we?” she prompts, starting the engine. At Cas’ non-committal shrug she pulls onto the road and leaves the mystery of Marcus Sullivan behind them.

 

~

  
Between the upsurge in spirit sightings, a werewolf pack, and an empousa attack that leaves Cas with a hole in his neck and Dean with a sprained wrist from stabbing it in its face, they don’t have much time to catch their breath. Days are spent wiping bad experiences from the minds of civilians who will never take their shitty jobs and mortgages for granted again; nights in seedy bars and sleeping along the interstate thanks to Cas’ inability to hustle and Dean’s game that she lost around the time she stopped trying to justify her existence through other people. It’s just more of the same, a girl, a guy, and an Impala, but without the apocalypse-shaped sword hanging over their heads. The simplicity of life Sam mourned two days before he threw in his lot with Satan crash-landed into the lap of the two people who are still shuffling their way along death row. That’s what they don’t tell you about judgement day: how to live with yourself when it takes everyone else but you.

When it takes the only person who matters.

Dean doesn’t talk about it. Cas seems to take her lead, or maybe he was never that interested to begin with. He was never that open a kind of guy. Drawn and intense, drawn into silence by the same crap Dean went through and shit she didn’t, shit she doesn’t care to know, like why he decided to stick around after everything, how humanity is working out for him, why Lucifer thought unconscious was more out of the way than dead or if he was trying for brain-damaged (and the way Cas acts sometimes, you’d wonder). Dean’s too angry and too tired to voice these questions. On some level, the fear of what he might say gets to her more than it should. A fear that Cas will come out with some brutally honest comment about how Dean delivered on her promise of freedom and a better life than servitude and not even really be sarcastic about it. This life was fucked from the get-go, and Cas has got to know that by now. If she asks why he stays, Cas wouldn’t lie, and his omission is about the only thing Dean has to stop her finding the nearest bridge to drive off. Cas looks at her sometimes like he gets that.

Cas doesn’t ask her about the dreams, her cold sweats in the middle of the day, the nothing she stares off into for hours at a time. It’s a mutual, unspoken agreement, and it suits them. They wear their silences like armour, too thick and heavy to shrug without damaging each other in the process.

They drive a couple hours down the coast and settle on a bar in Richmond, at the corner of Drug Deal and Urine, with forty bucks between them to ensure they forget where they are.

“I’ll inform you now,” Cas starts as they park the car, “that I’m sleeping in the backseat tonight.”

“Are you calling dibs?”

“If that’s what ‘dibs’ are.”

“You can’t call dibs, I’m the driver. I want the backseat, more room.” She kills the ignition and steps out under the one working streetlamp on the street. Right next to a dark alley. “Great,” she mutters. She makes to get back in the car to rectify her parking choices, in case someone breaks into it before they even leave.

Cas is already sitting in her seat when she opens the door, his hands on the wheel and looking up at her innocently.

“Uh, what are you doing?”

His expression turns smug and sits on his face too well after two years of sullen and righteous. “Now I’m the driver, and I call dibs.”

“You need the keys, Rain Man, and fuck no am I giving them to you.”

“I know how to hotwire.”

Dean clenches her jaw. “Real cute.” After a second she lets out a sigh. “Whatever, alright, you can have the backseat if it means that much to you.” She’s twenty years old again arguing with a teenager. Cas doesn’t exactly smile, but his triumph is palpable. He gets out of the car without another word. Dean resists the overwhelming urge to shove him, if only because his strength and control is now equal to hers, and instead of recovering, she seems to be getting weaker, new pains springing up every day and old ones that haven’t yet healed. The night before Cas pinned her in three moves and held her down long enough that she started to squirm, something she blamed internally on lack of sleep, lack of food, anything but the injuries that sap her strength or the power Cas regains that left her lightheaded. Dean leads the way to the bar and leaves the car where it’s parked. They won’t be long, not with how much it costs to sate their collective thirst and how little money they have.

“Perhaps you could room with any one of the men or women you find who seem so desperate for your attention.” The iciness of Cas’ tone doesn’t escape her, but, fuck. She shrugs it off. It’s been too long since she last went home with someone, not counting Castiel and the Impala or any number of motels they’ve shared, which she doesn’t. As tempting as a real bed with real sheets sounds, the thought of what she’d be doing between them makes her skin crawl.

“You seem pretty bitchy tonight, considering your win,” she retorts. When she looks back Cas shrugs. His face is devoid of the pride it held a minute before, his lips pressed thin, staring straight ahead with his feathers ruffled and a decidedly pissy set to his jaw as they push the door open.

The bar is exactly how it appeared on the wrapper, the kind of dingy, smoke-ringed Tuesday night in Virginia with fluorescent lighting bright enough to accentuate the grime under their boots. Dean pushes a couple notes into Cas’ hand and barks, “Southern Comfort, shots, lots of them,” before sprawling out in the nearest booth, exit and bathroom in sight. Several heads turn her way, the kind with missing teeth and bad constitutions, but she waits until Cas returns with a tray of shots and beer to assume a plan of attack. Three men, late thirties, reasonably not-unattractive. One of them is bound to be stupid enough to want her attention, and to pay in alcohol to have it. That, at least, Cas has right.

“Cheers,” she toasts, and downs a shot. The alcohol burns the back of her throat and stings her eyes in a way that draws a smile to her face. Cas sips his Pabst and stares at the wall.

There’s a woman in the corner, demure enough to blend into the wallpaper, the frame of her hair partly obscuring her pink-tinged cheeks, nursing a something-and-coke. The drooping of her brown eyes could be coquettish or it could be the drink she’s drowning her sorrows in.

“Heads up, buddy,” Dean mutters, nodding in the woman’s direction. Cas stares at her blankly and Dean rolls her eyes. “The woman over there, seemingly-unattached drifter gold.”

“Yes,” Cas affirms when he turns his head, and then, with a level of sarcasm that impresses Dean to no end, “I’m sure she’d make a fine bed mate.”

“Jesus Christ, how’d I ever get dumped with you? Go talk to her. Strike up a conversation about daytime soap operas or that koala place you visited, chicks dig the exotic.”

“Kuala Lumpur,” Cas corrects. Then, as an afterthought, “I have no interest in pursuing her for sex.”

“It’s always about sex with you,” Dean jokes.

“That, presumably, is why you brought it up.”

“She’s on her own, drinking, in a bar. It can’t hurt to ask her name, maybe – and I’m being radical here, I know – talk to someone for a change. Break out of your anti-social bubble, embrace the world, and all that self-actualisation crap.” Dean downs another shot. “Besides, no one should be drinking on their own.”

“If I leave, you’ll be drinking on your own,” Cas reasons.

“And then the guys in the bar will come to  me ,” she explains. “Seriously, go talk to her so I don’t have to sit through your moping. It’s giving me a headache.”

The look he shoots Dean is, still, decidedly pissy. Dean downs another shot and Cas glances over at the woman. He’s relaxed at least, like Dean doesn’t usually see around other people; relaxed and less disinterested in his surroundings. Everyday Cas is blending in more, shedding the remains of what once set him apart. Eventually Cas takes the advice to leave, sliding out of the booth with his beer in his hand and stalking off. Instead of approaching the tipsy spinster, he walks to another empty booth and flops down, facing Dean and meeting her eyes defiantly from across the room.

“Hopeless,” Dean mutters and shakes her head. She grabs the last shot and pushes the tray to the edge of the table.

She doesn’t have to wait long for Cas’ attitude to get to her before one of the not-unreasonably-unattractive guys leans over her table. A smile lights up her face, stretches her mouth thin and wide. This is how it’s supposed to go. For the next half hour, she exists solely as the kind of woman whose motivations, hopes, and dreams are as transparent as her personality. It’s an easy façade to occupy, and even after all these years it still works.

Four more shots and two beers later she starts to feel the alcohol outweigh the boredom at Jared’s – Jerret’s? Derek’s? something with two vowels – idea of flirting. The bar starts to heat up as more people enter, and somewhere along the way she shucks her jacket. Three more beers and her pocket is just as full, but it’s easier to look Gene in the face and ignore the way her skin crawls as his fingers brush her arm on the table. She catches Cas’ eye across the bar only to realise he’s been staring for a while, and it definitely is creepier than when he was invisible.

“Am I boring you?” Jason asks.

Dean draws her attention back to him and sidesteps the easy mark. “What? No, no, it’s just that guy—”

Jerome turns around. “The one you came in with?”

“I hardly know him.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

Dean fakes a laugh.

“’Cause it’s cool if you guys are into three-ways. He looks pretty pissed sittin’ there by hisself.” Jeremy turns back to her with a leer. “Sure he doesn’t wanna make this interesting?”

Bile rises in the back of her throat at the mention of sex thrown so casually on the table, and she fights the urge to gag or laugh or throw her beer in this guy’s – Jeremiah’s? yeah that’s it – face. Either way, this conversation is going nowhere, fast. “Well then, I should’ve brought my brother,” she quips, lengthening her accent into a parody of his. “He’s the one we’d want. About six-five, doe eyes, abs the like you’d just about lick butter off.” She adds a laugh, lowers her voice to molasses-sweet. “When he’s had enough to drink.”

Watching the colour drain from this asshat’s face washes the sickness from Dean’s mouth better than alcohol. His stunned expression twists into disgust; the urge to vomit, infectious as it is, seems to have passed to this guy as quickly as Dean lost it.

“What the fuck,” he growls.

She reaches into her pocket. “He’s only a phone call away.”

“You’re fuckin’ sick.”

She plasters on an innocent smile that not even the drunk or stupid would fall for, and says nothing as Jerry stands and hurls a few more choice words at her. She tips her drink up at him with a wink, enjoying the shade of red the back of his neck flares as he leaves. The guy’s voice rises above the din of the bar until the noise in the room fades. By the time Dean’s downed her last shot the bar is quiet, save for Jerret’s hollering.

The alcohol hits her hard, the fluorescent lighting blurring her vision and she’s reaching for her jacket to get the lead out before the guy comes back with his friends in tow. A hand on her shoulder has her reaching for her pistol when the smell of Sam’s cologne smacks her across the face and Cas is whispering, breath hot on her cheek, “We should leave”. He just about hauls her bodily out of the bar to the soundtrack of the one person in Virginia who isn’t into brother-loving and can’t take a joke, stumbling into the ashen-grey dawn to hurl and face-plant in the gutter.

It really isn’t her finest moment.

Sam is everywhere tonight – in her words, in the eyes of the petite blonde at the back of the bar, on Cas’ skin, affecting her with his absence. He’s there again in the strength and care of Cas’ arms when he pulls her up, drags her close, fighting her exhaustion and drunkenness with his human hands, saving the goddamned day all over again.

Cas fumbles with the keys but manages to open the door and push Dean down onto the back seat. She turns into the leather to hide her face. With her ear pressed against the seat she can see nothing and feel the judder of the door slam, the car’s vibrations as it starts. Cas drives in silence. Dean feels a wetness on her cheeks that confuses her until it slides down her lips, salty on her tongue when she opens her mouth to breathe.

 

~

  
The sun melts the asphalt, the Impala eats road faster than they can picture it, and the road chases the sun. There are only so many metaphors you can make from a stretch of land, and as many things to name in a game of I Spy. Dean’s never been particularly poetic, and apparently, neither is Cas.

“I spy something–”

“You didn’t say it right.”

A sigh. “I spy with my little eye – better?”

“Much.”

“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with ‘r’.”

“If it’s  road again I’m going to brain you.” At Cas’ smirk, Dean reaches for the steering wheel lock.

Cas doesn’t reply. His silence stretches into the horizon. They stop for gas along the highway and Cas slips inside while Dean fills up, returning several minutes later with an offering of chilled soda and breakfast burritos. Dean takes the drink and presses it to her forehead to beat back the last of her hangover; the stabbing sensation behind her eyes dulls.

She mumbles a “thanks” without looking and turns back to hang the nozzle up. A flash of shaggy hair, a reflection in the store window, and the familiar bark of a laugh across the lot, has her on the alert. Adrenaline pumps her body into motion while her mind is stuck in the past, tipping her over the precipice from memory into being. Her heart thumps to the rhythm of  Sam-my , Sam-my as she moves without conscious effort, breath constricted in her chest, drawn to the sound and sight of a ghost with a gravitational force that is stronger than her. When she rounds the pumps it’s gone; Sam, the spectre. Sam the roc, Huracan incarnate. Dust in the wind.

Someone shuts the door of a car as they hunker down into it, but it isn’t Sam. Sam wouldn’t drive a Dodge Charger. Dean has lived with Sam her entire life, can feel Sam in her blood, and she doesn’t feel him in Lexington, Kentucky. It’s not Sam. Sam’s gone. Sam’s in hell.

She clutches at her jacket self-consciously as her heart jackhammers hard enough to break clean out of its cage. If the memory of Sam is enough to do that, the real thing might kill her. She looks around for an anchor of familiarity and finds herself alone. Cas isn’t there.

The cars speed past along the highway. Soon enough, her breathing returns to normal. She waits in the car with her head on the steering wheel for what seems like an hour. Sam’s still there, his laughter echoing in the car, loud in her ears; his face behind her screwed up eyelids, frozen in the moment before he jumped, the wind whipping him backwards, the world tilting on its axis all for him. Sam falling for the world in which he didn’t belong, and Dean is fading away, all the way.

 

~

  
In the split second that Castiel lunges for the demon, several things happen in quick succession. One: a flash of recognition of who Castiel is lights the demon’s eyes up, either from ingrained knowledge or from Dean having shouted his name as a warning he didn’t heed or hear, but most likely the latter, several seconds before, and the demon, preemptively, just about soils itself in fear.

Two: driven partly by momentum, partly by a need for a secure grip, and partly from muscle-memory – as Castiel will attest to later – but mostly from his lingering impulses, Cas forgets himself and places a palm over the demon’s forehead while its arm is still in his grasp.

Three: Dean’s foot lodges in a tree root, and sends her sliding across the ground, her shotgun flying out of her grasp. Mud fills her mouth; the gash on her leg from wrestling with the demon stings as the fall rents it open further.

The other night’s lesson from the drunken union with her face and the gutter has no time to surface before; four: the demon realises the extent of Castiel’s powers (zero), the strength of Castiel’s grip (feeble), and the effect of his palm on its skin (again, nothing).

To recap, in this situation we have Dean, sprawled in the mud and bleeding from a cut on her leg; Cas with no ability to instantly exorcise demons with his hands, holding one, and; a pissed-off demon with knowledge of this.

The demon’s eyes light up with a different kind of feeling as it bares its teeth. “Well, I guess the others were right. My, how the holy have fallen.” It takes advantage of Cas’ stunned inertia to land a punch to his gut, and Cas doubles over with a grunt. The demon brings up its knee with force enough to drop Cas to the ground. Dean’s on her feet in a second, mud-splattered, eyes stinging, shotgun pushed against the demon’s head.

“Eat shit, dirtbag,” she growls, and pulls the trigger.

The force of the bullet shatters the demon’s skull and face, sending a spray of bone and blood and grizzle shooting across the ground and a backlash that coats the two of them in pieces of brain large enough to pick off with their fingers. A smell even worse than the mud erupts into the air; the dying smell, smell of bodily fluid, of fresh blood and a stopped heart.

The body slumps into the mud with a squelch and a thump. Smoke spills from the stump of its neck and soaks into the ground. Easier than an exorcism, or palming a useless hand to its forehead. Castiel pushes himself up, stumbling, breathing harsh, and face ashen in the feeble moonlight. The night makes shadows of them. Dean listens over the ringing in her ears and the thunder of her blood for any sound signalling another attack. The first demon had sprung itself on them so suddenly, wandering the outskirts of a patch of woods in Nebraska for a Nahual several states north of its usual habitat, and for the next few minutes as she regains her breath, she keeps her senses trained on the shadows.

Cas leans over, resting his hands on his thighs as his breathing steadies. Dean tastes copper on her tongue; a bite through her lip that broke skin when she hit the ground. When Castiel looks up, Dean laughs, giddy from adrenaline.

“You gotta protect your assets, buddy,” she admonishes lightly, just to shake off his dour expression. The colour returns to his face as he stands and takes stock of her. They’re both covered in mud and human gristle, but even the slide of it down Dean’s back and the smell of it in her hair can’t dampen her high. The stern and worried look on Cas’ face, however, gives her pause. “What?”

Castiel moves toward her. His fingers where they stroke over her busted lip are tender. “You should take more care.”

The words are an invocation that knocks the good mood right out of her, bringing seriousness to the situation that the demon’s presence should have wrought in the beginning. Dean’s two years younger and coughing up blood in a hospital bed, unable to lift her hands to wipe away involuntary tears as Castiel babbles about God and divine plans and stops only to watch as she silently cries herself to sleep. Right now he is inches away from her, touching her eyebrow and cheekbone with a hand that can no longer heal, no longer raise the dead. One of two hands that cause death and bring back worse things. He shouldn’t be this close; hers is not a space that he should be occupying.

He pulls his hand away. Dean’s blood rests on the pad of his thumb, already coagulated, lifeless and dull.

“I’m not the one who almost got kneed in the jewels,” she croaks. She sucks in a breath on the last few words and they come out shaky. Castiel, standing before her, looks anything but shaken. His determinism spiel comes rushing back, and despite everything they’ve done, despite where they are – or maybe because of it – the convoluted lengths of his past belief unravel. They were always meant to end up here. It makes sense to her, how each step led them further from the people they thought they needed to be.

There’s a body without a head in the mud at their feet and Dean’s having an epistemic crisis. Castiel is motionless and unreadable and he could still be an angel for how stoic he is. If it weren’t for the moisture in his eyes, the cloudiness of them, he could be a statue.

The illusion shatters as he moves closer. This was always the plan, then: that Castiel would take the first step, and Dean would retaliate too late. This was always going to happen.

“I’m not used to this,” Cas admits. Finally, finally he glances down. Takes stock of himself, his own body, twisted ankle to mirror Dean’s own and bloodied knuckles. If he’s lucky only a couple will be broken. He grimaces as he flexes them.

“You’ll get it, eventually. We’ll train more. Can’t have you dying on me ‘cause you can’t remember to throw a punch.”

Cas looks up. “You’re hurt,” he observes, without glancing at the tear in her jeans and the gash underneath it. He stares straight at her as if he’s reading it on her face, and maybe he is; Dean’s never been that good at hiding, but if it’s more than the physical, if it’s taken him this long to notice the heartache Dean wears like another brand on her skin, then it backs up her theory of brain-damage.

Maybe Cas woke up wrong. Is this what Dean deserves? A brother in hell and a defective angel-human hybrid. She aches from the inside out. Is this a part of heaven’s plan, too?

Cas places his hands on her waist. The shotgun drops into the mud. From this close she can count the age lines around his eyes, counts backwards from three until he presses his lips against hers, and she immediately opens her mouth to let him in.

Dean’s shirt peels off her body as Cas runs his hands under it, touching her clammy skin in a way no one has for a very long time. It makes her shiver, a current running across every place they touch. She draws back. Cas kisses her cheek, jaw, neck, his movements unhurried but unpractised. Her head spins, her mood plummeted sharply enough that she’s lightheaded and gasping slightly. Gravity pulls her down.

She smells it again, Sam’s scent. His aftershave; stinging her nose and eyes, causing them to run. Cas’ beard rasps against her skin; he leans further into her. It’s everywhere – that smell. It’s him. Beneath the vitriolic concoction of sweat, blood, mud and death, the woody alcohol tang of Sam clings to him. Another shudder forces its way through Dean’s body and erupts out of her mouth in a sob.

She turns away.

“Dean?” Cas’ voice holds a confused, desperate taint that makes her sick.

She shakes her head. “You don’t shave,” she spits violently, despite herself.

Cas’ brow furrows. “I – does it bother you?”

“No, you don’t  shave .” Her tongue is too thick in her mouth, skin crawling, legs shaking under her weight. The smell of Sam is all over him, all over her. Her voice is too high, too loud. The wind breaks in her ears, forcing her backwards. “Why are you wearing Sam’s aftershave if you don’t  shave ?”

Cas takes a step back in counterpoint. Colour rises in his cheeks as if he’s been slapped. He doesn’t answer, but Dean is desperate for it; what could he say, what answer could be enough for her? They are two desperate people, too desperate. Anger pours through her bloodstream, forcing its ways into her words.

“You’re wearing Sam’s shirt.”

Cas looks down; it’s barely recognisable underneath the blood-spatter.

“You’re carrying Sam’s pistol.” Forty-five Magnum, sticking from the lip of his jeans.

“You sit in Sam’s seat, but you’re not him.” Her voice breaks like a wave. Dean’s back connects with the Impala, unconscious steps that put distance between them and they’re separate again. She turns and presses her side against the metal, letting the car support her. Cas’ heavy steps squelch in the mud; his hand comes up to rest on her shoulder and she shrugs him off again.

“Dean, look at me.”

There’s a silence left behind after Cas’ soft words, lightning-crack calm, cut trees and scorched earth. Dean looks over her shoulder.

“You’re angry. You’re in pain.”

She scoffs. She’s not an animal, wounded and scared, bellowing in the mud, aching to die. She’s not his psych patient. “Then put me down,” she spits, “do the humane thing.”

“You’re not alone. You have no idea how important you are.” His eyes flash with anger, and something else. Sympathy. “How many people you’ve saved. I can still see them their faces; the billions living and breathing because of you.” His anger crackles from him - an echo of his former self - and in that moment he’s almost real to her, almost the human he proclaims himself to be. If Dean reached out, would he feel as solid, as permeable and affecting as the scent he wears? “You’re not the only one who lost in this war.”

Dean turns to face him. His anger bleeds out into the air. “Well, thanks for the pick-me-up, really. Appreciated.”

“We’re both alive, in spite of everything. Because of you.”

“Because of Sam.”

Somewhere in the distance thunder rolls across the horizon. The sound of hooves, beating against the cloud cover. Something breaks in Cas’ eyes. A streak of lightning carves the sky in half.

Cas steps back again, and Dean can breathe. “I wish there had been another way. Dean, I’m sorry. For everything you’ve had to give.”

Dean can’t tell if his people skills are rusty, if Cas has learned that’s a platitude you’re supposed to say, or if he really does feel that guilty. His body language doesn’t convey his motives.

“Forget it. We need to clean this shit up.” Dean nods in the vague direction of the corpse. Cas raises a hand to her cheek the moment she starts to move. Despite herself, she flinches, muscles jumping under her skin as Cas’ thumb traces her cheekbones, smearing dirt and blood. She swallows and Cas’ eyes track the movement. “Take off your clothes,” she whispers hoarsely.

Cas’ hand drops to his shirt without hesitation, his eyes still on her face. The flash of skin, growing wider with each undone button, seems to glow in the moonlight, pale to the point of translucency. The jut of his ribs is a stark reminder of how thin he is, how little he eats as if to prove himself above humanity still. He strips efficiently, shucking his ruined shirt to the ground, exposing bony shoulders and hips, scars of Dean’s neat stitches, the mess of his neck from the empousa, the white lines of the sigil carved into his chest, dry patches of caked mud that had soaked through his shirt.

The slight shake of his hands could be passed off as left-over adrenaline, if it weren’t for the hopeful expectation in his eyes. It’s easier for Dean, to think of herself as nothing but a notch on his belt; that sex means as little to him as easy kicks do to a seasoned hunter. The memories are only meant to last as long as long as the act, as long as it takes to pull your boots back on and be out the door, and everything after that is a bonus. Sex is easier than acknowledging that Dean will teach him that, too.

When he starts on his belt Dean stalks over to the trunk, hears his movements still, feels his eyes staring after her. “All the way,” she instructs, and pops the boot. She digs around for a minute to the sound of wet clothes peeling off skin, the cut of a zipper through the muggy air, until she picks out the shovel and fresh clothes. She shoves a pair of Sam’s old jeans and a shirt into Cas’ chest as he stands, unashamedly naked down to his underwear and unlaced boots. The expectation on his face morphs into a confused scowl.

“Here, take these,” she says, adding “you’re not getting any mud in my car” at his raised eyebrows. She keeps walking to the edge of the forest and starts to dig, fresh mud flung over her shoulder, splinters stinging where they dig into the soft parts of her hands and forearms. Cas’ eyes are stuck on her, his air of disbelief and eventually resignation crowding her from fifty feet away. She gets lost in the mechanical act of digging, shoulder in, muscles braced, feet planted, push-shift-drag-fling. Sweat pours down her face, muscles growing colder despite the exertion and the summer humidity. The mud clings to her clothes, her skin, working its way down to her bones.

“Need any help?”

Castiel’s voice wakes her up.

“No, I got it,” she calls. After a minute the Impala’s headlights flick on, illuminating the scene. She doesn’t stop to look at the blood flooding the ground, the state of her clothes, the body in the middle of the clearing. She keeps digging until there’s a sizeable grave, three feet deep at most. The shovel sticks upright where she leaves it. The dead-weight body sluices through the mud, stinking and stiff, its feet dragging uselessly behind it. The gaping hole where the head should be leaks onto her chest and stomach, sluggish brown-black blood and fluid dribbling down her clothes. Bits of shattered bone and brain squelch into the mud beneath her boots.

If there was any room in her nightmares for anything but Sam, this might fill it.

The unmarked grave takes half as long to fill as it did to dig, and when she’s finished smoothing it down with shovel and boot and back by the car, Cas is already in the passenger seat, fully clothed with the door open, staring out into the sky. She strips off her own clothes, down to her underwear and boots, digs another hole near the boot for them; Cas’ discarded clothes, Sam’s shirt and the dress pants he’d managed to hang onto, tear apart, and stitch back up are balled up on the roof of the car, and she buries them too. She pulls one of Sam’s sweatshirts out of the boot that hangs to her knees and really, she should stop recycling Sam’s clothes. It hits her, now her blood has stopped racing, how often she dredges him up in her mind and with her body, how hopelessly reckless she is with the memory of him. The thought makes it hard for her to breathe, shakes the ground beneath her feet.

She made a promise to him that she wouldn’t live like that anymore, and every day, every hunt, is a living reminder of how she ignores it. Thirty years is long enough.

She keeps the sweatshirt on.

Cas is still watching the sky when she gets in the front seat. The thunder keeps rolling and lightning flickers a few miles away. The distant roar of the oncoming storm is ominous through the windshield, to the east where the sun is just beginning to paint the skyline. Dean turns the car around, and they drive.

END


End file.
